“Grunting like a pig!” : 50 years later, behind the scenes of the shocking scene of Delivrance

Four men decide to canoe down a river in the Georgia desert one weekend. What should have been a pleasant outing turns out to be the worst nightmare of their lives. Attacks, rapes, murders, the weekend never seemed so long to them…

After reading the preceding lines, you have most likely figured out the story of Deliverance. John Boorman’s masterpiece, this is one of the great American films of the decade of the 70s. Survival filmed in extreme conditions (the actors will perform their own stunts on the descent of the raids), to give is a shocking piece of work with a still chilling ferocity that hasn’t aged a single wrinkle as we celebrate its 50th anniversary.

Confounding the morality of the audience, the film is also known for two sequences. The first is an obviously famous scene in “Banjo Duel”, with Ronnie Cox trying to follow the haunting rhythm of his hometown.

Memory sequence…

Snarling like a pig!

The second famous sequence is the one that makes the film scary: the rape scene of the character played by Ned Beatty. Humiliated, he is turned into an animal by Red, who asks him to “grunt like a pig” (“Grunting like a pig!” in VO), under the helpless gaze of Jon Voight, who was tied to a tree next to his abuser.

Alternating extreme close-ups of the rapist, played by Bill McKinney, and the rapist, Boorman portrays the butcher and the victim alike, down to their foreheads, drenched in sweat and even down to their teeth. Flawless or nearly so in one, totally rotten in another…

A ten-minute scene, deeply disturbing, in which sound is also important, which was all the more difficult for Ned Beatty to film because to give It was his first film. Besides, he didn’t want to turn around several times; Therefore, Burman converted him once.

In the audio commentary that accompanied the film on DVD, Boorman explained that Warner executives, unenthusiastic about the prospect of the scene, asked him to shoot it two different ways; One for the film’s theatrical release and the other for television. Reluctant to this idea, Boorman and the rest of the team then came up with the idea of ​​the line “Squeal like a pig”, which worked on both versions.

Also, according to the director, a member of the technical crew named Ross Berg suggested that Beatty could simply “grunt like a pig”. Boorman thought the idea was great and asked Bill McKinney to deliver the line to Ned Beatty when he was about to rape her.

The impact of the film and this scene in particular should make the male audience think about the sexual violence that women are victims of. Consider how society views rape victims. In the film, the four friends also commit murder in order to hide Bobby’s sexual abuse and further destroy his life.

In 2012, Burt Reynolds, whose career was catapulted into orbit thanks to this film, thus revived this idea of ​​the suffering of rape victims in an interview. The Huffington Post : “Women understand this movie faster than men. You know, for years men have been throwing the word ‘rape’ around without ever thinking about it. What were they saying and what did they mean? And I think the movie just makes men think about something very important, to understand pain and shame and change in people’s lives. “.

cargo for bit

“There has never been a movie in the history of Hollywood without a woman who made the money!” Hit a Warner executive on the way out of a test screening of the movie, I’ll tell you Burman in the Guardian. Nevertheless, it was a big hit at the box office, grossing $46 million and was even the 5th highest grosser of the year.

A success that also weighed heavily on Ned Beatty, who returned to this famous and infamous stage so often that he appeared in almost 160 roles during his career: “Grunting like a pig” has entered common parlance, as poor Ned Beatty can attest. Everywhere he went, people said, “Grunting like a pig!” It went on like that for years.”

As for his assailant, Bill McKinney, he seemed delighted with his fame thanks to the film and this sequence, even though he has done many other works, not least (Josie Wells’ Outlaw, Le Canardeur de Michael Cimino, Rambo… ). Before his death in 2011, he even used the site’s domain name www.squeallikeapig.com, after being deactivated, like his personal site. You can’t make this up.